“One day. I’ll tell you some stories.”
“Remember Diane ranting about how unfair it was that you were famous?” He grimaced. “Like it mattered. You should just shut that down if they try to go down that path again.”
“I’m not famous. Mary was.”
“But she was properly famous, even I had heard of her. And now I am sleeping with her husband.”
“Oliver!” I laughed. “And it was nothing like you think, okay? I was just the…you know. Husband. And we’re only sleeping together because like…”
“You’re a disaster.”
“I need to learn to control my mouth. I’m famous, you know.”
We did this. Tried to lift the mood. Lift anything. Just…talk. When nothing we said was actually real.
“If I had my phone, I would google you.”
“Don’t. If you did, you’d find lots of boring dentistry stuff and a few very unflattering photos of me going shopping and looking dishevelled and sad. And probably some stuff about growing tomatoes.”
“That does sound sad. And now you get to go to luncheon parties and try not to drink the poisoned wine. How your life has changed!”
“Oliver,” I warned. Again.
“It’s funny, though. Admit it. And you get to have a handsome young boyfriend on your arm. We can still win this thing.”
The thing was? He made me laugh, and that in itself was the only thing that was stopping me from getting up and following that Jorge and Gerald right out that door. Now. Despite the fact that my boys would never speak to me again and that the press would have a field day with me and…and…
“You can’t just walk out,” he said, like he could read the panic in my eyes. “It’s okay. We can just play along for a while and see what happens.”
I didn’t think I could. Because those thoughts had been rumbling around in my head last night and were there again this morning. This was wrong. So very, very wrong. Fraudulently so, and if I was anything? I wasn’t a fraud. Also, if my patients saw this? Oh God. I hoped they wouldn’t watch. Colleagues? Esteemed other associates in my field, people I kept in touch with? I’d never be able to set foot at the British Dentistry Convention again. The internet was everlasting, and unfortunately? The boys would kill me. But I could live with that. Which I tried to find words to relay to Oliver, who just shook his head as I spoke.
“But it’s not fair on you, Oliver. You should have a chance of meeting someone. And when you do? I’ll just quietly leave.”
“What?”
“There’s nobody here for me.”
“Diane really likes you.”
“Says who? She’s as desperate as that Wren. I fit the demographic, so she shows an interest. It will all end in tears. I may look clueless, but I wasn’t born yesterday, Oliver.”
“Okay,” he said quietly.
“Doesn’t mean I haven’t got your back,” I continued weakly.
“Well, if you’re going to leave?”
True. I wasn’t making much sense here.
“And I think you’re just digging yourself into a hole,” he continued. “A big one.”
He was right. Again.
Chapter 12
Oliver
“What’s your favourite thing?” he asked me later that night, lying in bed. Unusually for us, we were both still awake. I’d had a shower and expected him to be asleep. He wasn’t, obviously. But I still went quiet, shuffling uneasily under the shared duvet.
